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The paper is based on a number of theories, elaborated within the interdisciplinary field of study ”law and literature”, and interprets Thorsten Jonsson’s short story collection Fly till vatten och morgon [Flee to water and morning (1941)] in terms of equity. The paper demonstrates that Jonsson’s method of arranging his criminal material – mostly real criminal cases, reported in newspaper articles and investigation records – to a large extent corresponds to the principle of equity: the short stories take up an hermeneutic attitude toward the presented criminal cases, correct official legal representation of the crimes by refering to the inner life of the criminals, supplement the individualized and psychologized portraits of criminals by traits borrowed from the image of the paradigmatic criminal and relating them to general human weaknesses, use these complex reflexions on criminality to criticizying the judicial and penal apparatus etc. Special attention is given to power structures established by the collection’s equity project. It is argued that the interpretative practices of the short stories rest on the binary, theological-utilitarian notion of nature which implies repressive marginalizations and, among others, results in the criminalization of homosexual behavior. But paradoxically, the collection’s equity hermeneutics revolts againts its own hegemonic regulations and produces a number of counterhegemonic semantic displacements. Particularly subersive are the short stories’ narrative structures which one the one hand are a product of the collection’s binarities, but on the other hand load these equity norms with a connotative ironic ambiguity.

The paper examines Thorsten Jonsson’s Fly till vatten och morgon (Flee to water and morning, 1941), a short story collection based on material from real criminal cases, reported in newspaper articles and investigation records. Special attention is given to the connections between Jonsson’s short stories and the criminal psychology of Andreas Bjerre, an intertextual relation highly neglected by earlier scholars. Jonsson studied Bjerre’s psychological theories while working on a monograph on the prose writer Martin Koch. The discussion of the paper focuses on five intertextual areas. Firstly, it is argued that the characters in Jonsson’s short stories in their construction are founded on Bjerre’s psychological classification of criminals. Secondly, it is demonstrated that Bjerre’s conception of the paradigmatic criminal had an analogous influence on Jonsson’s characterization. Thirdly, drawing on Bjerre’s ethics, the paper analyzes the collection’s moral approach to criminality. Fourthly, some intertextual correspondences are shown between Jonsson’s social discourse and Bjerre’s criticism of the European judicial and penal apparatus. Fifthly and finally, the paper points out that some of the collection’s most effective narrative devices are inspired by Bjerre’s interview method, invented by him for the purpose of revealing self-deception of criminals.

Todorov and After. Some Reflections on the Modern Study of the Fantastic

The paper examines Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the fantastic, formulated in his influential study The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to A Literary Genre (1970, eng. transl. 1975). Special attention is given to the theory’s historical background, its epistemological structure, and its reception in literary criticism. Discussing the genesis of Todorov’s concept of the fantastic, the paper focuses on three fundamental factors determining his investigation: the high status of the fantastic in French literary history and criticism, the development of the structuralist methodology in the sixties, and Todorov’s intimate knowledge of Russian formalism. Drawing on Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, the paper analyses the epistemes ruling the surface structure and the deep structure respectively of Todorov’s theory. In the surface structure one can observe a considerable epistemological homogenity, based on the episteme of dehumanisation. In the deep structure, however, Todorov’s definition of the fantastic, it is claimed, refers to incompatible notions of imagination rooted in two different epistemes: one pre-Kantian, corresponding to the Greek notion of phantasia, and one post-Kantian, founded on the idea of subjectivity. Todorov’s structural, anti-subjectivist approach to the fantastic, the paper demonstrates, results in a rebirth of the subject. As often the case with groundbreaking works, the reception of Todorov’s study has been mostly critical. Scholars have found five main weeknesses in Todorov’s concept: a lack of historical, contextual and ideological modes of description, a definitional narrowness, an inability to establish stable and pragmatic genre denominators, an overdimensioned emphasis on narrative categories, and a disregard for non-literary and nonlinguistic media. The revisions of Todorov’s concept that have been elaborated during the last decades have used of a wide spectrum of theoretical models: Goldman’s genetic dialectics, the theory of possible worlds, the notion of intermediality, the cognitive narratology, and the theory of iconic „antiworlds”, among others. With reference to Bloom’s notion of anxiety of influence, the paper argues that the attempts to modify the theory tend to relapse into Todorov’s own patterns of thought, and, paradoxically, confirm his position as leading scholar in the field of the fantastic.

30.

Bak, Krzysztof

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Literature and History of Ideas, History of Literature.

This monograph within the field of literary studies examines various modern representations of Byzantium from a cultural semiotic perspective. In this context, Byzantium was represented not only or chiefly as a static and fallen historical empire, but as a living, multilingual and multinational borderland. The study analyses an extensive body of Swedophone textual material, consisting of fiction, essays, poetry, Byzantine literary history and historiography, travelogues, literary criticism, newspaper articles, broadcasts and Orthodox Christian hymnography translated into Swedish. With a summary in English.

35.

Bodin, Helena

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of History of Literature and History of Ideas, History of Literature.

This article discusses the notion of Byzantium and Byzantium’s potential capacities as a multifaceted borderland, as shaped and perceived in Julia Kristeva’s novel Murder in Byzantium. In spite of its title, this is not a historical, but rather a so-called total novel, which reconciles several different plots – romantic, criminal, political and philosophical. It relies on both fictive and historical texts, especially on The Alexiad, written in the 12th century by the Byzantine princess and the first female historian ever, Anna Comnena. Through a literary analysis, this article shows how Byzantium is shaped in the novel by transgressions of the borders of narration, identity, space and time. Byzantium is thus of great interest to the general public and an academic discussion of borders, origin, history and culture, so important for the discussion of Europe’s role today in – or, as suggested in the novel, perhaps between – Eastern and Western cultures.

36.

Bodin, Helena

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of History of Literature and History of Ideas, History of Literature.

During the 1950s and 1960s the former notion of Byzantine culture as rigid and artificial turns into a challenge and a complex field of interest for several Western European writers. One of them is the well-known Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf (1907–1968), who found Byzantine tradi- tions still alive in Orthodox piety, in Istanbul and Greece, as well as in the Balkans and Karelia. Fascinated by these folk traditions he used ele- ments of Orthodox hymns and icons in his poems, whereby they gained a new function of estrangement with modern Swedish readers and cri- tics. Ekelöf never called himself a Christian – he rather saw himself as an outsider. To him, Byzantium held the desirable position of being located outside of traditional Western aesthetic norms and cultural borders, yet close in time and space. Ekelöf’s work is an intriguing metaphor for this paradoxical role played by the Byzantine tradition in modern European literature, itself a subject in need for further study and discussion.

38.

Bodin, Helena

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Literature and History of Ideas, History of Literature.

”God, Now I Have Only You”: Theological, Narratological and Rhetorical Aspects of the Child’s Close Relationship to God in the Poetry of Britt G. Hallqvist

Works by the Swedish poet and hymn writer Britt G. Hallqvist (1914–97) were of crucial importance for the renewal of Christian poetry for children in Sweden during the 1960’s and 70’s. The aim of this article is to examine how the child’s relationship to God is shaped in Hallqvist’s prayers, poems and hymns for children from this period. Usually hymns for children depict God by means of description, but Hallqvist creates an active and reciprocal relationship between the child and God. She retells well-known Bible stories with a focus on children and from the perspective of children. In her poetry, she allows children to pose questions to God and to speak candidly with God, thereby enabling them to approach God with parrhesia. Furthermore, to characterize God, Hallqvist prefers metonymical devices – contiguity, personal relationships and human actions – and consequently she recognizes and defines God “by the children in his arms” (in a poem translated into English by Gracia Grindal in Preaching from Home, 2011: 223f). By such devices, Hallqvist’s Christian poetry for children becomes an ongoing conversation, characterized not by static definitions and descriptions but by action, movement and dialogue. Her so-called poetic theology turns out as inseparable from child theology, where the little child is placed in the center and regarded as foremost.